Saturday, April 04, 2015

Saturday, April 4, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, looting and burning homes takes place in Tikrit, what the no-thanks for US air support in Iraq probably means, Judith Miller does not repent nor recant, and much more.

Oh, Judith.

What is there to say?

If there's anything worse than becoming a joke, it has to be turning yourself into a parody.

Judith Miller's published a 'thought piece' for those who've never thought and for those who've always been spoon fed their thoughts.

The Bully Boy Bush Administration and the bulk of Congress -- and the bulk of Congress -- sold an illegal war to the world. To do that, they needed to silence dissent and they needed to saturate the public with their message. A compliant and pathetic media -- which we still have in the US -- desperate to be 'cool kids' with whomever is in power -- ibid -- rushed to see who could be the most helpful.

Some lied.

Some were attack dogs whose purpose was to smear anyone who spoke out. The Dallas Morning News, for example, ran a little pipeline operation where they attacked anyone in the arts who spoke out. It was known in real time. It's only become more infamous as one of the key participants has become a raging alcoholic (karma?) and can't stop talking -- at the new paper the boozer now works for -- about what they did back then at the Dallas Morning News.

Along with the attack dogs, you had the court stenographers. There were two kinds here -- the liars and the idiots.

Judith Miller was an idiot.

Got a whopper no one will believe? Feed it to Judy, she'll swallow it! She'll swallow anything!

And she did.

Repeatedly.

She wrote one bad report after another.

None of them should have been published.

Jill Abramson tried to position herself as having opposed Miller. She tried to do that after Miller's reporting was in shreds -- reality left reporter Judith Miller dead from a thousand paper cuts.

But in real time Abramson didn't try to stop Miller's bad reporting from being published. Jill can lie all she wants -- and she is a liar -- but the reality is she also had the power to assign other reporters and to have them do real reporting. Jill didn't do that either.

There were whispers (untrue) that Miller was getting things in print because she'd had an affair -- in the long ago past. That was a lie. Miller got stuff in the paper because the paper wanted her star turns. She didn't sleep her way to publication.

And the paper -- Jill and all the people in charge -- are as responsible for Miller's reporting as is Judith Miller. They could have fact checked it, they could have assigned other reporters, they had any number of options to address any problems.

But they looked the other way.

And in fairness to the New York Times, they weren't the only paper doing so. And the broadcast and cable talk shows and alleged news programs rushed to do the same.

Today, Barack Obama can say anything -- true or false -- and the press treats it as gospel.

That's not a new development.

Fox and others are up in arms about how Barack gets away with this and that.

But they didn't give a damn when it was Bully Boy Bush getting the same press treatment.

The problem is the press.

And maybe a wiser Judith Miller could have addressed that.

Instead, what she mainly accomplishes with her latest writing is proving this site right.

We noted she wasn't a liar.

We noted she was a bad reporter who believed anything she was told.

Her 'thought' piece only backs that up.

A book is to follow, but the piece says everything that needs to be said.

Did you know that Bully Boy Bush was a victim? He was misled and misinformed?

This is exactly why Judith Miller is a lousy reporter.

She could make that claim about herself.

Some might believe it, some might not.

But she has the capabilities to make that claim about herself.

She can't see inside Bully Boy Bush's brain or his alleged soul.

She writes as if she can or as if she's done this groundbreaking investigative reporting that documented this for her.

Yet again, it's just Judith's demons running free.

Miller was supposed to be a reporter.

Not a columnist, a reporter.

That means trafficking in the facts, not in opinion.

But the facts didn't interest her.

She always 'massaged' them and let claims -- presented as fact -- overtake her alleged reporting.

This was true when she was the poster girl of the left writing for The Progressive.

She carried it with her to the New York Times.

She didn't carry any real journalistic skills with her and never felt the need to practice the core journalistic principle of skepticism.

The essay/column/piece was supposed to demonstrate that Judith Miller is a reporter and it only demonstrated that she remains a fool.

We've been very fair to Judith Miller here.

I defended her right to refuse to testify. We opposed her being put behind bars for refusing to divulge a source.

We have repeatedly noted that Judith Miller wasn't the worst of her peers.

For example, the Amy Goodman's of the world rushed forward to say no one died for Jayson Blair's lies.

Jayson Blair, like Miller, is a former 'reporter' for the New York Times.

What Jayson Blair did was far worse than what Judith Miller did.

Jayson Blair knowingly lied in reports he filed.

Knowingly and intentionally, he lied.

There is no defense for that.

Were he a columnist, we could argue whether he was spinning or not -- and were he a columnist, I wouldn't even engage in that conversation because I'd expect a columnist to spin for any number of reasons -- including being entertaining.

But he was a reporter and his pieces were filed as reports.

And he lied.

Repeatedly and consistently, he lied.

If Miller had lied, we still would have defended her right to refuse to name a source.

But Miller didn't lie.

She was stupid. She was foolish. She was desperate for applause that her 'star turns' in print had prepped her for.

She wasn't a liar.

Her latest writing makes it clear that she's not a liar.

It also makes clear that she's not a reporter.

And it makes clear that she's one of the stupidest people to walk the face of the earth currently.

People can make mistakes.

People can be stupid (I'm stupid all the time).

People can do all of that and even not learn from it.

That will never make them worse than a reporter who knowingly and intentionally lies.

And you have to wonder what it says about the Amy Goodmans, alleged reporters, that they would make a case for a reporter like Blair who knowingly lied in his reporting?

Miller didn't lie.

She was stupid and foolish.

And clearly didn't learn a thing from her experience.

If she had, she'd stick to what she knew. If she speculated, she'd label it speculation.

Instead, 'all knowing' Judy is back to insisting she sees reality.

She saw WMDs in Iraq -- she presented it as reality.

That was then.

Today, she sees into the heart of Bully Boy Bush and knows exactly what he was told and what he believed.

Reporting is realizing that you don't know everything.

Judith should go into creative writing so that she can molest her creative muse for as long as she so desires.

I'd really hoped that Judith Miller would emerge from this entire debacle with some form of wisdom. That would be something worth sharing. She could explain to other reporters and future reporters how a journalist needs to be skeptical and how a reporter needs to self-check repeatedly to ensure that she or he is not being sold a bill of goods.

There are so many lessons she could have learned and could have imparted.

Instead, she's still insisting that whatever happened is something that happened because of somebody else.

Now I'm all for let's not dogpile Judith Miller.

I've said here repeatedly that Miller wrote reports -- bad reports -- but she was not the one waiving them into print, she was not the one booking herself on Oprah and Meet The Press, etc., and on and on.

Miller was one bad reporter in a pool lousy with bad reporters. And, to her credit, she was one of the dumb ones as opposed to the group of reporters who knowingly lied.

So I don't pin all the problems of the press with regards to the Iraq War on her.

And I'm also aware that she became the scapegoat because she was a woman.

If you doubt that, note the 'left' attacks on Maureen Dowd led by the losers at Media Matters and sexist Bob Somerby.

Maureen is to be attacked?

I'm struggling to think of any national columnist who called out the Iraq War more than Maureen.

That doesn't make her above criticism.

But her gender does mean she gets attacked constantly and her attackers don't even give her credit for what she did do.

As he rushed to defend Susan Rice, Bob Somerby had the nerve to suggest that Maureen had never written of Condi Rice.

We called that lie out the day he wrote it.

Maureen did more than anyone -- way more than weak-ass Paul Krugman. (And if that's news to you, pick up a copy of Dowd's Bushworld: Enter At Your Own Risk.)

But she gets no credit for it. And some of her worst attackers are men who blogged in support of the Iraq War. Yes, Ezra, we mean you. Yes, Matthew, we mean you.

Judith Miller was part of a large pack of bad reporters but she's the only one who went down and that did have a great deal to do with gender.

(The sexism was also evident in the reaction to her arrogance -- some would label it 'confidence' -- which angered so many of her critics -- "I was proved right" -- while her frequent co-writer Micheal Gordon's arrogance was taken in stride and considered normal -- his arrogance when it was on display in an interview with Amy Goodman -- and Goodman crumbled under that arrogance.)

It would have been something if Judith Miller had arrived at an awakening -- or gained even a tiny bit of insight.

Instead, she's the explanation of why the same stupid things -- like war -- happen over and over again: So many of us refuse to learn from mistakes.

PM Al-Abadi announces the liberation of Tikrit and congratulates Iraqi
security forces and popular volunteers on the historic milestone

207 retweets145 favorites

Of course, Tikrit wasn't liberated.

So Wednesday, the Iraqi government again announced that Tikrit had been liberated:

"Here we come to you, Anbar! Here we come to you, Nineveh, and we say it
with full resolution, confidence, and persistence."That's Iraq's Minister of Defense Khalid al-Obeidi as quoted by the AP.And yes, he does sound a bit like Howard Dean.AP notes he dubbed today in Tikrit a "magnificent victory."They're far too kind to note that yesterday was also dubbed a victory.BBC News does note
that, claims aside, "Troops are still fighting to clear the last
remaining IS holdout in the city, but Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was
filmed raising an Iraqi flag there."

AFP reports what took place yesterday in Tikrit: Pro-government militiamen were seen looting shops in the centre of
the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Wednesday after its recapture from the
Islamic State jihadist group in a month-long battle.

The militiamen took items including clothing, shampoo and shaving cream from two shops in central Tikrit before driving away.Iraqi Spring MC Tweeted about the militia looting and offered a photo:

Today, Lydia Willgress (Daily Mail) notes, "Shia paramilitary fighters looting and setting fire to buildings in Tikrit are 'out of control', an official said. Ahmed
al-Karim, head of the Salahuddin provincial council, said the fighters
had burnt 'hundreds of houses' in the last two days." And Middle East Monitor reports:

Earlier, the Iraqi governor of Saladin left his own province in disgust over the looting spree being carried out allegedly by the Shia militia.Ahmed Abdel-Jabbar al-Karim, chief of Saladin's provincial council, told the Anadolu Agency
late Friday that he along with Governor Raed al-Jabouri left the
province in protest against al-Hashid al-Shaabi's alleged looting and
burning spree in Tikrit.Al-Karim had also blamed the central Iraqi government of not doing
enough to stop the militia's illegal actions. "Governor Raed al-Jabouri
told Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi about the violations and left the
province when no stopped the militia from robbing and burning shops in
Tikrit," he said.

According to al-Karim, the Shia militia also clashed with him and
al-Jabouri when they tried to stop their rampage in central Tikrit. The
militia men allegedly used abusive words, laced with sectarian
references, with the senior Iraqi officials, which then quickly turned
into a physical clash that left several body guards injured.

Hopefully, for the militia thugs, those clashes took place in the 48 hours when Haider al-Abadi was suspending the rule of law.

Let's be really clear that saying 'Starting now the law applies' is embarrassing.

Near the charred, bullet-scarred
government headquarters, two federal policemen flanked a suspected
Islamic State fighter. Urged on by a furious mob, the two officers took
out knives and repeatedly stabbed the man in the neck and slit his
throat. The killing was witnessed by two Reuters correspondents. The incident is now under investigation, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan told Reuters.Since
its recapture two days ago, the Sunni city of Tikrit has been the scene
of violence and looting. In addition to the killing of the extremist
combatant, Reuters correspondents also saw a convoy of Shi'ite
paramilitary fighters – the government's partners in liberating the city
– drag a corpse through the streets behind their car.

No doubt Barack's special envoy John Allen will term the above "excesses."

The military campaign is thus exacerbating the sense of
powerlessness, disenfranchisement and humiliation among Sunni Arabs that
gave rise to Islamic State.The growing tendency in Baghdad and the south to equate Shi’ite
militias with the national army, to declare oneself a patriot while
expressing gratitude to Iran for its intervention, and to subsume
national symbols under Shi’ite ones — with black, yellow and green flags
referring to Hussein ibn Ali ibn Abi Taleb, Shiism’s third Imam,
increasingly crowding out the Iraqi flag — is reshaping Iraqis’ national
identity in ways that will vastly complicate well-intentioned efforts
to advance inclusive politics and governance.

The overwhelmingly Shiite ground forces battling ISIS in Sunni Tikrit
have become increasingly powerful as the government army has
disintegrated. The militias have a brutal record of sectarian
bloodletting, including burning and bulldozing thousands of homes and
other buildings in dozens of Sunni villages after American airstrikes
drove ISIS out of the town of Amerli in northeastern Iraq last summer.
If that happened in Tikrit, the United States would be blamed for
helping to trigger yet another cycle of horrific sectarian violence.

There were others as well.

Yet that it happened in Tikrit is being portrayed as 'surprising.'

So much about the 'liberation' of Tikrit is seen as 'surprising.'

Including the way 'success' is credited.

A few hundred Islamic fighters managed to thwart and hold off a little
over 30,000 security forces (soldiers and militias) who, for three
weeks, were led by the combined military strategy genius of Baghdad and
Tehran.

The forces suffered huge losses.

So much so, that the operation was put on 'pause' because the forces were reluctant to move forward.

And though a Shi'ite militia leader (and Iraq's Minister of
Transportation) -- as well as an Iranian designated by the US government
as a terrorist -- mocked the idea of US air support, in the end Iraq's
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi went begging to the United States for
that air support.

And only once that was received did the bogged down operation begin moving.

But
to hear some of the Iraqi forces here tell it, the Americans deserve
little or no credit. And many of the Shiite militiamen involved in the
fight say the international coalition’s air campaign actually impeded
their victory — even though beforehand they had spent weeks in a
stalemate with militants holed up in Tikrit. Some even accuse the United
States of fighting on the side of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Still,
most of the militiamen now pouring into this city in the Sunni
heartland along the Tigris River were not even in the real battle over
the past week, and the only shots they fired were into the air on
Thursday — which they did with abandon.

The ingratitude, as we noted earlier this week, is telling.

As is the spinning that being bogged down was part of the plan all along.

No, it wasn't.

They announced the mission would take a few days.

It took weeks.

They announced they'd reach the center of the city in the first five days.

They didn't reach it until after the US started dropping bombs.

The ingratitude is telling.

From Tuesday's snapshot:Loveday Morris (Washington Post) notes, "Militia leaders refused to admit Tuesday that they were still working
under American air cover. One coalition strike occurred overnight as the
pro-government forces advanced, according to Col. Wayne Marotto, a
spokesman for the coalition operation."They weren't the only ones failing to note the air strikes.In his public remarks, Haider al-Abadi thanked the Iraqi security forces as well as the militias.He pointedly did not think the US pilots -- this despite his begging for this help and assistance.

So the forces don't acknowledge the US assistance and the prime minister doesn't acknowledge it and it all seems so familiar because it is.

Ranking Member Gary Ackerman noted that the US had already
spent 8 years training the Iraq police force and wanted Darby to answer
as to whether it would take another 8 years before that training was
complete?

Her reply was, "I'm not prepared to put a time limit on it."

She could and did talk up Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Interior
Adnan al-Asadi as a great friend to the US government. But Ackerman and
Subcommittee Chair Steve Chabot had already noted Adnan al-Asadi, but
not by name. That's the Iraqi official, for example, Ackerman was
referring to who made the suggestion "that we take our money and do
things instead that are good for the United States." He made that
remark to SIGIR Stuart Bowen.

Brooke Darby
noted that he didn't deny that comment or retract it; however, she had
spoken with him and he felt US trainers and training from the US was
needed. The big question was never asked in the hearing: If the US
government wants to know about this $500 million it is about to spend
covering the 2012 training of the Ministry of the Interior's police, why
are they talking to the Deputy Minister? (That would be Nouri al-Maliki. He was Prime Minister and he refused to nominate anyone to the post of Deputy Minister so that he could control himself. Adnan al-Asadi was never confirmed by the Parliament because he was never nominated. He was a puppet.)

And Brooke Darby either lied or was lied to.

Because the Iraqis refused the training.

See the e June 29, 2012 snapshot for what happened to the US building to train the Iraqis in. Spoiler alert: it was given away.

So in 2011, there were signs that the Iraqis didn't want US help on training.

Those signs weren't heeded.

Today there are signs of the same.

They're not being heeded.

In addition to underscoring how the Barack Obama administration refuses to learn -- they're so Judith Miller -- it underscores something else.

Hillary.

Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

The State Dept took over the US operation in Iraq on October 1, 2011. The start of the fiscal year.

They were given millions and millions of US taxpayer dollars for their mission in Iraq.

And yet Hillary refused to provide specifics to Congress.

Kind of like her e-mails, she deemed them 'private.'

And that might have been forgiven if the mission were a success.

But it wasn't a success, was it?

The program wasted money and went on longer than it should have -- no one was showing up for training -- and when Tim Arango and the New York Times reported on that, the State Dept insisted Arango had it wrong (he was correct).

She wants to be president.

She wanted to be when she was Secretary of State.

Yet preparing for a planned run did not make her treat the US taxpayer -- or the taxpayers' money -- with any great care or oversight.

And the end result was that the State Dept mission in Iraq was a failure.

And a huge one as the ongoing violence demonstrates.

Yet some people want to claim her tenure as Secretary of State gives her foreign policy experience?

I mean the vagina -- I have an anal hang up -- don't ask, my kids will already be cringing.

Many women do enjoy being eaten out.

Some women enjoy it when men do it, some women enjoy it when women do it, some women enjoy it regardless of the gender performing the activity.

Some women enjoy having their anus eaten out.

By women or by men.

Some men enjoy having their anus eaten out.

By women or by men.

Some like insertion. That can be a tongue, a finger, a cock, a dildo -- strap on or hand held.

Some men to love to insert.

Some women love to insert.

Some men love to be the object of insertion.

Some women love to the object of insertion.

A female can be the inserter of a woman or a man.

A male can be the inserter of a woman or a man.

We're going over the above not to make my children sick to their stomachs. Moms are never sexual beings in the eyes of most children who like to believe that all sexual activity stopped with their conception.

And that's fine and I do censor myself here from time to time for that reason.

But the above -- which I did give my kids a heads up to -- is the result of e-mails over a post that many find offensive.

I can understand why they find it offensive and that's why we're not censoring today and my kids (adult children -- so they should recover at some point) will walk around today with a severe case of the heebie jeebies.

We're not going to delink from Susan. But we're also not going to pretend that this is true:

The world doesn't revolve around them or their sex lives (which, being
honest, is the only thing that differentiates the LGBs from everybody
else).[. . .]The LGBT crowd constantly invokes the civil rights struggles of the
1960s to make their point, but it is absurd on its face when you
realize, as I said above, the ONLY thing distinguishing them from the
rest of us is their sex lives, something that can't--or shouldn't,
anyway--be seen. It isn't like true physical characteristics of women
(the real ones, not men in dresses), older people, or racial minorities.

Their sex lives are no different than anyone else's and to claim that there is a difference in their "sex lives" -- her term used at least twice -- is to sport ignorance in public.

Not just a hostility towards lesbians and gays, but an actual ignorance of what two people (or more) may do when having sex.

The myth of the Kama Sutra aside, there are a limited number of sexual acts two people (or more) can engage in. The Kama Sutra is like a cookbook for eggs, basically.

You may fry an egg, you may scramble an egg, you may poach one, you may boil an egg, you may cook them in an omlet, but you're still using eggs.

The Kama Sutra offers different positions, for example, but it still revolves around the basics (mouths, vaginas, penises, anuses, fingers, foreign objects, etc.).

So to say that a lesbian or a gay man is different from a straight man or straight woman because of their "sex lives" is sexually ignorant. Please, refrain from birds and bees talks because you don't know the basics involved.

What Susan calls "sex lives" others might call sexual attraction and sexual identification. (Which would be different only in that one group is attracted to opposite genders while the other is attracted to the same.)

I believe sex ed should be taught in schools. I didn't wait for my kids to learn it in school. I was frank with them about what could happen in bed and what could happen after (disease, pregnancy, etc) and why you need to play safe when you feel you're ready to engage in sexual activity.

Words do matter and saying that the "sex lives" of lesbians and gays are different than the sex lives of straight people demonstrates, at this late date, willful ignorance at best.

Words do matter.

Susan's writing about a pizza joint whose owner told local media that he would gladly serve any gay person that walked in but he wouldn't cater a same-sex wedding.

This resulted in protests and Susan's labeled those wrong-headed but let's stay with catering a same-sex wedding.

Because Susan's stupid here too.

Learn to f**king read, people.

I was in the middle of the Iraq snapshot and made the mistake of going into the e-mails where community members expressed their outrage over Susan's post. I understand the outrage, I agree with it.

I don't understand's Susan's stupidity.

I thought I was going to have to educate on "catering" and how the pizza owner probably meant . . .

No, he didn't probably mean anything.

He said what he meant.

I just went to Susan's linked source -- an idiot at The Atlantic -- who also called it "catering."

It's not catering, you stupid idiots.

I thought the man used "catering" and that he actually meant providing pizzas.

Unlike Susan, with her bigoted image of gays as frou-frou and lah-di-dah, I actually was at a same-sex wedding last year where pizza was "catered."

In this economy, gays, lesbians and straight people are all facing a pinch.

And who the hell are you to insult someone struggling for providing pizza as a meal at a wedding?

Seriously, Susan has blogged repeatedly about her own money problems online and yet she ridicules the idea that some people might be having pizza at the reception after their own weddings?

Anyway, I'm pissed if you can't tell, the man didn't call it catering.

Here's what he said: "If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their
wedding, we would have to say no….We are a Christian establishment."

[Correction: What she said : "Owner Crystal O'Connor."]

That's how it was at the wedding I attended in October. The pizza was delivered and family members and guests put them on the table and some helped serve (I was a friend who helped serve). That's what I assumed the pizza owner meant when he said "catering" but the reality is that he didn't say "catering," he said provide.

Provide is what took place at the wedding I attended.

I had a whole thing here where I was going to explain how catering for one group but not for another is discrimination. Because it is.

And if you're bigotry can't see that, that's your damn problem.

(If you've noticed, my nice voice has fallen by the way side. I hate stupidity -- hate it. And my sympathy for Susan just sailed out on the ocean when it turns out she -- and The Atlantic writer -- are calling it "catering" when the man didn't.)

So catering is not the issue.

What we're talking about now is pizza delivery.

And what the pizza joint decided was that they would serve gays and lesbians who came in but they would not deliver to them.

'To a wedding!'

I don't care what the event is.

If Dominoes advertised "We deliver . . . except to gay men!," the outrage would be instant -- and justified.

Let's do the positives on Susan. This was going to be a major section -- before I found out that she's another Judith Miller who can't nail down her facts.

(Catering a wedding means I'm not serving. I'm a guest, I'm not serving. Catering a wedding means that the pizza parlor sends employees to set out the pizza, to serve the pizza and to clean up the mess after. Maybe if you're too poor to hire a caterer, you shouldn't write about catering. Was that bitchy? Probably. And I'm in a real bitchy mood because I don't like stupid. Or having to waste my time on it.)

Susan's pluses include that she's still here.

That's not minor.

Too many women stopped blogging in 2008 and following 2008. If they do blog, they go after soft topics.

Susan didn't back down from the rank sexism of 2008.

Susan is also a very strong voice.

That's a good thing. Whether you agree with her post on this or disagree with her post on that, she's a strong voice.

She is not meek.

Nor does she make apologies for having an opinion.

That's very much needed and she deserves tremendous applause for that.

She has covered the education beat better than anyone -- including better than many of the experts on the topic she's linked to.

Susan truly is an expert on the education issues.

She is also wonderful at noting passings.

I think she's a must read for any DVD collector because Susan's got a sense for the great and often forgotten.

Again, before finding out that she's wrong about the catering, this section was going to be very long and singing many of her praises. I'm too pissed to do that now, sorry.

But as I'd stated earlier, we won't be delinking. She's an important voice.

On the "t" issue, let's note that for a quick moment. Susan doesn't use LGBTQ. She stops it with LGB.

She has problem with "T" -- transsexual and transgender

Gloria Steinem had the same problem decades ago. She tries to lie about it now. It's embarrassing.

As one of the feminists who called her out -- to her face -- in real time on that nonsense, I'm embarrassed that she still choose to lie about it today.

She slammed a group of people who were born in male bodies but had surgery to become, on the outside, who they were on the inside.

Gloria was openly hostile to them -- and wasn't just one instance.

What Gloria's real problem -- and this may or may not be true for Susan, I don't know -- was revolved around a group embracing an extreme version of femininity -- a gender stereotype. And doing so at a time when gender stereotypes were being exploded.

Gloria's anger was the same anger she'd have at a group of women who were born female and were embracing that gender stereotype.

But, in her rage, she couldn't focus on the gender stereotype and instead made insulting remarks about the women and how they were born with male genitalia.

And that happens.

When we're hurt and angry, we can use words that we don't mean.

We're hurt and we want to lash out (see my remark about those who can't afford to hire caterers . . .) so we go for what we hope will hurt.

While Gloria's still dishonest about her past on this issue, she is genuinely welcoming to the T community today.

But her reaction was really not about the way she attacked them (in the past), it was about the anger she felt as a woman trying to enlarge the roles women had access to and along comes a group who not only embraces a limited vision but insists it is what women are and must be.

Of course, Gloria was going to be angry.

As she would be when women born with female genitals do the same.

But she made comments that she shouldn't have. (And don't say it was 'a different time.' I called her out on it in real time. Nora Ephron, at the same time, was writing "Conundrum" which did not treat the person like a freak because they were born in the wrong body but did hold the woman accountable for embarrassing -- and limiting -- remarks about womanhood.)

It's amazing how smug we can be and quick to define "the other."

I really don't understand the rage over someone deciding to become externally who they are internally. How is someone else doing that hurting you? How is it putting you out? Unless, of course, it's bringing up issues you've buried -- maybe you're unable to admit your own sexual identity? -- why is that a problem for you?

Susan's got some problems.

They include her failure to grasp that the man was stating he wouldn't deliver pizzas to a gay wedding and they include calling activists "idiots" for shutting down the pizza joint.

How so many stupid idiots have destroyed their careers and the careers of others.

I'll be nice to one rock band which did tell me two years ago that they went too far (and since then they have been making strides) (And they rightly pinned their excess on Jackson Browne -- who has set such a bad example for so many in the last 8 years or so. Yeah, Jackson, I said it. Rock that on the water.)

But Ellen Barkin?

She didn't just destroy her career, she destroyed everyone working on that sitcom's career.

A TV show, to be a hit, needs as many viewers as possible.

But there was Ellen and her Tourettes Twitter forever attacking Republicans.

Elected officials?

No, every Republican in the USA.

Now if I looked like Ellen -- let's be honest, she was never pretty and even all the plastic surgery today hasn't made her pretty -- and I'd already flamed out in films, to the point that I was doing straight to video crap (utter crap like Operation: Endgame), and I got a chance to start over, I'd grab it and run with it.

Not Ellen.

She felt America needed to know how much she hated so much of the country.

If you're trying to sell tickets, if you're trying to get viewers, if you're trying to sell albums, you need to realize that you can't go around insulting groups of people.

Ellen's attacks on all Republicans killed The New Normal.

Michelle Shocked's attacks on gays and lesbians killed her career.

I have no problem with people speaking out.

I certainly don't begrudge anyone speaking out on an issue.

Or attacking certain people.

Call out the pompous politician/actor/official/whatever.

But when you start attacking We The People, then you're an idiot who's so stupid that you're destroying your career.

Michelle Shocked did.

She attacked a group of people.

And let's be honest there, Michelle had nothing but tour dates to support her. She didn't really sell albums anymore (not even on her own label). She only had tour dates. And here was this woman that people embraced because she'd been labeled 'weird' and a 'freak' and subjected to electroshock as a result. And they thought this woman who survived that was someone who would be welcoming of all -- especially those who had suffered. Instead, they found out that she was a raging homophobic.

And she can be that.

In America, she can be that.

And she doesn't have to fear being imprisoned for 'hate speech.'

But when she attacks groups of people, she has to grasp that there will be fallout.

And if I own a pizza joint in Santa Monica, I need to grasp I'm there to make money and feed my family and friends.

I need to grasp that I only want to be turning away customers for one reason -- we're overbooked, we have too many customers so some people can't come in to lunch and some delivery orders we can't take because we're backed up.

Instead, he elected to go after a group of people and deem their special day unworthy of a pizza delivery.

That's stupid.

He made his own problem.

No one else did.

That doesn't justify someone saying on Twitter that the place should be bombed.

But he made his problems.

And it wasn't about "catering," it was about delivering pizza.

And, though Susan's misses the point (among many points), it's equally true that those objecting were not just gay men and lesbians.

His position was offensive to many.

His position was also economically stupid.

He then chose to shut the place down.

In other words, he can shoot off his mouth and insult a group of people but when others call him out, he can't take it.

Boo-hoo for the stupid idiot who didn't know how to run a business.

And don't shoot off your mouth if you're a coward.

I've taken positions that were unpopular. I'm not talking about online.

I've gotten death threats before -- when they really meant something.

I didn't freak out or pull a Jane and hire bodyguards.

As Vanessa Redgrave advised me at one point, "You said it, you deal with it."

And you do.

And things calm down in time.

So the pizza place is closed? (Is it? That's the impression in Susan's piece.) Well that's on the owner who had the guts to shoot off his mouth but didn't have the guts to keep his business open.

Susan chose to shoot her mouth off and sport stupidity:What the LGBT crowd can't get through their heads is they are such a
tiny minority depending on the goodwill of something like 98 or 99
percent of the public, that they lose all common sense at times.

"What Susan can't get through her head is that she's unemployable and that's on her."

How would Susan react to someone having said that to her when she was struggling.

She certainly wanted sympathy for all her hard times.

But she writes something like the above?

That a group depends "on the goodwill"?

LGBTQ Americans are Americans and, as such, are guaranteed the same rights as any other Americans.

I also question her intelligence when it comes to her figures.

Does Susan think only 2% of the US population is gay?

I think the population is much higher than that and that the number's higher than it was 20 years ago and will be higher in 20 more years.

The reason for the increase is not, I believe, due to more people becoming gay but because more people are comfortable admitting who they are.

Susan's stupid on this issue beyond belief.

She should stick to a topic she knows something about.

If she doesn't grasp the suffering that the LGBTQ community has experienced and continues to experience, she needs to stay away from the topic because she's only exposing her own ignorance, intolerance and hatred.

We focus on Iraq here, it's a real issue.

If Susan's got time to focus on her delusion that lesbians and gay men suffer no discrimination, she might try focusing on Iraq as well because it was the issue that made the blogosphere and it became the issue that they all quickly avoided.

But at the very least, she could try reading the actual words of the man she's defending -- the homophobe who would refuse to deliver pizzas to a same-sex wedding.

And, by the way, the idiot at The Atlantic is Conor Friedersdorf. He's one of those writers who believes business have rights -- and that the rights of business trump the rights of citizens. It's why he's to be taken with a grain of salt when he attempts to write about social issues.

It's why he actually has the pizza owner quoted in his article but Conor's still too stupid to realize what the owner said and instead runs with "catering."

Friday, April 03, 2015

Well, this issue is another special one to me as the publication reaches
its 43rd anniversary. I've owned it since July 1974 after serving as
editor beginning in June 1973. Needless to say, I had no idea it would
turn into a career when I started in the Drum Corps World office on Hampden
Avenue in Denver, CO, on that beautiful June day. I was the sole
employee, so no one was there to show me the ropes.

My assignment was to produce an issue in three days and get it ready for
mailing. It was the third week after the beginning of the season and
what I found on my desk that morning were galleys of text, waxed on the back
to create page layouts, and a bunch of pre-screened photos to fill the pages
around the various show reports. In truth, I had never done a layout
before, so it was literally a "baptism under fire." Somehow I got
through it, but the issue didn't look that great. Thankfully, I was a
quick learner and the second one was better.

Now 42 years later, I've seen and heard a lot about and around this great
activity. And sometimes I discovered bits of news I would have
preferred to not know. But 99% of this job -- now my "hobby" -- has
been wonderful. I find it hard to fathom that I've produced nearly 900
issues over the years with assistance from dozens of writers, photographers,
artists and the local friends who worked with me through many of those years
-- Barbara Loeffelholz, Steve Powers, Chris Hollenback, Ed Matheny, Kip
Ritchie, Jeff Collins, David Prueher and others who were here for shorter
times.

So, here we are, nearly at the beginning of another season that promises
to be filled with great performances, interesting and no doubt innovative
uniforms, costumes, equipment and visual designs, all framed by the confines
of a traditional U.S. football field.

I trust that you will be able to see at least a few shows in your area,
make it to one of the two movie theater presentations in June and August, and
perhaps even ben among the 20,000+ fans who get to see the season-ending DCI
Championship in Indianapolis or the DCA Championship Labor Day weekend in
Rochester, NY.

Thanks for your continued support of this publication through its various
forms -- tabloid newspaper, printed magazine and now on-line electronically
-- and, if you're in a position to purchase products from our very supportive
advertisers that make DCW possible to come to you 17 times each year -- your
support of the companies, suppliers, manufacturers, show sponsors, national
and international organizations that play a big part in keeping this movement
viable and moving forward.

Michigan Greens Support SB 13to End Straight-Ticket Voting============================= The Green Party of Michigan (GPMI) announces its support of Senate Bill 13 of 2015, which would end the "straight-party" ticket mechanism so often confused in its application in Michigan.

The bill was introduced January 20 by Marty Knollenberg (R-13, Troy) and assigned to the Senate Committee on Elections and Government Reform. Committee chair David Robertson (R-14, Grand Blanc) has not yet scheduled the bill for a hearing.

GPMI Vice Chair Art Myatt points out, "For years, Michigan has let voters check a party's 'straight-ticket' box at the top of a general-election ballot, then split that ticket by voting against candidates of that party in individual races. But many voters don't understand this. Worse, some poll workers don't understand it either, and give voters who ask about it wrong advice.

"That means 'straight-ticket' voting is generally NOT used as intended. We are better off eliminating it entirely."

This month's issue of Ballot Access News notes that straight-ticket devices unfairly exclude independent candidates (listed in Michigan as having "No Party Affiliation"). And they distract voters from ballot questions and non-partisan races – which in Michigan, officially includes state Supreme Court justices.

Doug Campbell, the Green Party's first candidate for Governor of Michigan, sums it up this way: "SB13 will take some of the decision-making power away from party bosses and return it to the voters, where it belongs."

• Public financing (and free air time shortly before Election Day) for all legally qualified candidates, of any party or none.

GPMI elections co-ordinator and 2014 Attorney General candidate John Anthony La Pietra notes a good companion reform to SB 13: repeal of language in MCL 168.786 which limits voters to two minutes in the voting booth, with more time up to poll-workers. “All polling places should have enough voting stations to give voters all the time they need to complete their ballots.”

The next statewide membership meeting of GPMI is scheduled for Saturday, June 6 in Grand Rapids.

The text of SB 13 and other official information can be found at the Michigan Legislature Website:

GPMI was formed in 1987 to address environmentalissues in Michigan politics. Greens are organizedin all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Eachstate Green Party sets its own goals and creates itsown structure, but US Greens agree on Ten Key Values:

Tikrit is liberated or 'liberated' and it only took a full month to do that.

A few hundred Islamic fighters managed to thwart and hold off a little over 30,000 security forces (soldiers and militias) who, for three weeks, were led by the combined military strategy genius of Baghdad and Tehran.

The forces suffered huge losses.

So much so, that the operation was put on 'pause' because the forces were reluctant to move forward.

And though a Shi'ite militia leader (and Iraq's Minister of Transportation) -- as well as an Iranian designated by the US government as a terrorist -- mocked the idea of US air support, in the end Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi went begging to the United States for that air support.

And only once that was received did the bogged down operation begin moving.

But
to hear some of the Iraqi forces here tell it, the Americans deserve
little or no credit. And many of the Shiite militiamen involved in the
fight say the international coalition’s air campaign actually impeded
their victory — even though beforehand they had spent weeks in a
stalemate with militants holed up in Tikrit. Some even accuse the United
States of fighting on the side of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Still,
most of the militiamen now pouring into this city in the Sunni
heartland along the Tigris River were not even in the real battle over
the past week, and the only shots they fired were into the air on
Thursday — which they did with abandon.

The ingratitude, as we noted earlier this week, is telling.

As is the spinning that being bogged down was part of the plan all along.

No, it wasn't.

They announced the mission would take a few days.

It took weeks.

They announced they'd reach the center of the city in the first five days.

They didn't reach it until after the US started dropping bombs.

The ingratitude is telling.

But no one wants to note it.

It's much more than bad form or ill manners.

It goes to an attitude this administration already saw.

They built a training building -- supposedly start of art -- to train Iraqi forces.

AFP reports what took place yesterday in Tikrit: Pro-government militiamen were seen looting shops in the centre of
the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Wednesday after its recapture from the
Islamic State jihadist group in a month-long battle.

The militiamen took items including clothing, shampoo and shaving cream from two shops in central Tikrit before driving away.Iraqi Spring MC Tweeted about the militia looting and offered a photo:

AP reports that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced this morning that the government "will begin arresting and prosecuting anyone who loots abandoned properties in the newly-recaptured city of Tikrit."

So remember that, Iraqi forces.

You have, at best, 48 hours after 'liberation' of a city to steal everything.

After 48 hours, al-Abadi will announce arrests will start.

Now stealing is a crime -- a very serious crime in the Middle East.

But for 48 hours, they'll look the other way and give you a pass in Iraq.

If you commit the crime after 48 hours, then Haider's going to enforce the law -- you know, the one that was in effect the entire time.

The following community sites -- plus NPR and War News Radio -- updated:

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.